


What Baking Can Do

by Panda365



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (Comics)
Genre: Baking, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panda365/pseuds/Panda365
Summary: Rebecca Banner decides to bake some cookies for her son’s birthday.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Brucemas 2020





	What Baking Can Do

**Author's Note:**

> Brucemas2020
> 
> Prompt: Birthday 
> 
> Character: Today’s a freebie so I chose Rebecca Banner.

Rebecca’s plan to give Bruce an amazing 3rd birthday starts with a grocery run. Flour, butter, sugar...she’s stuck on the chocolate chips; white or milk?

Her head tilts with an absentminded smile with a thought on her own birthday with her mother and she’s always been the typical milk chocolate lover. It’s classic. Normal.

She appreciates the normal parts of life and tries to keep things steady and controlled. Appearing at the cash register with white chocolate? It’s a risk. Scandalous! Blasphemous!

Rebecca lifts a red and white bag of milk chocolate and tosses it into her basket. 

Back home, she digs for her bowls and a recipe etched on a piece of cardboard clipped from an old baking box. There are cursive notes down the side from her mother, an exclamation point after ‘never taste the raw batter’.

As a child she would still snatch the spatula before it was washed. A joke between Rebecca and her mother that merited the recipe addition. 

Rebecca looks over her shoulder after tying an apron around her waist;

“Good morning baby. Did you have nice dreams?”

Bruce nods, trying his hardest to pull the chair three times his size closer to his mother. Rebecca gives him a helping hand and picks him up onto the chair. She leans over the counter to look him in the eye;

“Do you know what day it is?” 

He shakes his head ‘no’, floppy curls over his forehead. She rubs his tiny back, “Well, I’ll tell you; it’s your birthday big boy. Do you know how old you are?”

He lifts his fingers and tries to count, “Three?”

“Three!,’ she demonstrates and mimics his gesture, ‘That’s more than halfway to a whole hand now! My goodness!”

“Mama?”

She smiles, “What baby.”

“What this?”

He’s found the bag of chocolate. She giggles, “Mommy is going bake some cookies with that. Do you want to help mommy?”

He nods. She digs through the drawer and hands him a set of small spoons, “We need these to measure.”

“Mashure,” he tries to repeat, analyzing the tools.

“Flour,” she moves a clear cylinder of white powder onto the counter. 

He watches her with intent focus, his wide brown eyes taking in every move she makes. She paces around and collects their ingredients and her hand held mixer;

“Okay! I think we’re ready.”

“Ready!”

She rolls up her sleeves just below her elbows, her dress flowing with her every movement, “We will add the butter and the flour.”

Standing behind his small frame she guides his hands. The second she sees him inhale with that dreaded squint she knows what’ll happen, still jumping when Bruce sneezes in the bowl of flour, sugar, and butter. White puffs of powder erupt from the bowl and onto the cabinets, into Rebecca’s face. She drops the bowl, laughing against his back;

“Oh Bruce…”

He inhales again, she covers his nose with her sleeve quickly this time to prevent it from happening again, still laughing, “Bless you.”

He wiggles his nose looking up at his mom. He points to her cheek;

“Powder mama.”

“Does mommy have powder on her face? Where?”

“There.”

She wipes a hand over the patch of white on her cheek and adds it to the flour already on Bruce;

“Now it’s on you.”

He giggles, bouncing in his stance and tries to wipe the flour from him onto her, “No mama! On you!”

“It’s on me?!? Oh my goodness,’ she gasps dramatically and dips her fingertips into the bowl to splash more on him, ‘Now it’s on you.”

“No!” 

“Oops!,” she giggles.

He tries to mimic her, she lifts the bowl just out of his reach and heads to dump it into the sink and start fresh. 

Flour, butter, sugar…

Bruce reaches for the sugar. She chuckles and pushes it out of his arm length with a distraction, “We are going to add some eggs now.”

“I do it.”

“Okay, yes you can do it baby,” Rebecca situates herself behind him once again and holds his hands to crack the eggs. 

He looks at the leftover yoke on his hand and goes to lick it clean. In a panic Rebecca drops her eggs shells onto the floor and removes his hands from his face;

“No! Don’t eat raw egg baby.”

Her heels crush the shell underneath when she steps back over to where he’s standing. Disappointingly she checks her shoe, covered in egg shell and flour.

The vanilla is next, trying to hold his tiny hand steady. He prefers to shake it and dance in place. It splatters the counter and her forehead as Rebecca tries to pour it into the small teaspoon. 

She huffs out an exhale and blows the bangs from her forehead. He takes an inhale and does the same. She chuckles and brushes his cheek, “It’s time to mix! Do you want to mix?”

“Yeah!” He claps excitedly.

She takes her spot behind him and holds his hand to start a clockwise motion around the bowl. 

When she dips a finger in the bowl to get a taste of the batter her eyes widen, it’s an instinctive action she hasn’t completely thought through. Rebecca isn’t surprised at all when she sees he’s done the same.

When they start to roll the cookies on the sheet Bruce finds the spatula to lick clean. She has half a mind to scold him, instead, taking it from his hands to lick herself. He laughs and reaches to take it back. 

Carefully, she lays their creations into the oven and leads him into the den for a reading of one of his favorite books. A round of tag follows. 

Her heels have long been abandoned and the flour still on the two of them is landing on the sofa and the carpet as they roll around in their play. Her hair is a mess and he looks equally chaotic, too busy laughing to care. 

When it’s time to check the oven he waits patiently, standing back on the chair. 

She offers him one first, “Here you go birthday boy.”

He takes a bite, savoring a chocolate piece. He offers the rest so she takes a bite of the same one;

“Oof. I think we overdid the chocolate! What do you think?”

“It’s good.”

“It’s good? Yeah?,’ she brushes his curls and plants a kiss on his head, ‘I love you baby.”

“Love you mama.”

“Thank you for helping me today, sweet boy.”

“Thank you mama.”

Rebecca smiles and moves to locate her beloved recipe, grabbing a pen to make a few adjustments to the card…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Bruce is digging through the kitchen early one morning, glasses on his face when he tries to locate something. 

His baby girl has a birthday tomorrow and having been born in the dead of winter means frequent snowstorms. The original plan to head off to the museum will have to wait. 

There are enough ingredients in the house to do some baking. The cabinets seem full enough; flour, butter, sugar…

Bruce lifts a piece of cardboard clipped from an old baking box. There are cursive notes down the side from his mother and grandmother, an exclamation point after ‘never taste the raw batter’. It’s covered in flour stains and a patch of previously splattered vanilla blocks out exactly how much brown sugar to add. There’s a line through ‘never’, corrected with a bright red pen that now reads ‘always’.

“What you doing daddy?”

He looks up above his glasses, a small girl with her wavy red hair looking back when he grins, “Hi sweety; I’m making cookies for your birthday today.”

“I help?” 

Bruce holds his smile and addresses the chair at the table, moving it over the counter and picks her up to stand on top of it.

He takes down a jar of flour and opens it carefully. She’s a good listener who does everything carefully and the way he tells her to, mixing all of their ingredients together into the bowl. Once he’s finished using the egg beaters, the batter is ready for a taste test. He removes the two; there’s one for her and another for him. 

She freezes, squinting with a cringe and a sharp inhale. His eyes widen but it’s far too late to do anything about it. He can’t help but chuckle when her head knocks back and drops forward with a sneeze, straight into their bowl...

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry...Not sorry. <\3


End file.
